Misconduct

Item-writers test this with a vignette of personal behavior and dare you to over-reach. The “tell” is a fact pattern outside the office — a bar fight, a single DUI, weekend activism — paired with answer choices forcing you to decide whether the act reflects adversely on the member’s professional reputation, integrity, or competence. The hinge is that professional linkage, not whether the conduct is criminal or embarrassing: fraud, tax fraud, and embezzlement qualify because lying, cheating, or stealing signal dishonesty that bears on professional fitness, while purely personal lapses — including legal transgressions from acts of civil disobedience — do not.

The classic trap is routing the wrong standard. Lying in a research report or padding credentials is Misrepresentation, Standard I(C) — not Misconduct — and so is plagiarism, where the cure is acknowledging the source. Trading on material nonpublic information or manipulating prices lives under Integrity of Capital Markets, Standard II (II(A) and II(B)), never here. Memory hook: Misconduct is the “is your integrity intact,” Misrepresentation the “what you said about the work” — when the lie is about the work product, look one standard over.